Virology features of a family cluster of SARS-CoV-2 infections in Shanghai, China

Yanqiu Zhou; Zheng Teng; Hongyou Chen; Xiaoxian Cui; Fanghao Fang; Jiabin Mou; Hui Jiang; Xi Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.bsheal.2021.05.003

Virology features of a family cluster of SARS-CoV-2 infections in Shanghai, China

Biosaf Health. 2021 Aug;3(4):187-189. doi: 10.1016/j.bsheal.2021.05.003. Epub 2021 Jun 1.

Authors

Yanqiu Zhou¹, Zheng Teng¹, Hongyou Chen¹, Xiaoxian Cui¹, Fanghao Fang¹, Jiabin Mou¹, Hui Jiang¹, Xi Zhang¹

Affiliation

¹ Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shanghai 200336, China.

Abstract

The global spread of SARS-CoV-2 is currently continuing, and the World Health Organization has announced the risk assessment of the viruses as high. In this study, we analyzed virology features of SARS-CoV-2 causing a family cluster outbreak. Among the six family members, five have been laboratory-confirmed infection of SARS-CoV-2 viruses. A total of five SARS-CoV-2 viruses have been isolated from the nasopharyngeal swabs. The complete genome of the viruses exhibited 100% nucleotide identity with each other. Only two nucleotide differences have been observed between genomes of the isolated viruses and the HCoV/Wuhan/ IVDC-HB-01/2019 strain. Therefore, SARS-CoV-2 has been confirmed as the causation of the family cluster infections.

Keywords: Family cluster; Full genome sequencing; Nasopharyngeal swab; SARS-CoV-2.